Kung fu and comic books.

They might seem unrelated but they were inspiration for the multi-platinum music group Wu Tang Clan.

Muji’s award-winning design for a CD player was borrowed from a gesture in the lighting industry.

And Steve Jobs legendary fusion of art and technology was inspired not just by LSD but calligraphy.

The best inspiration often comes from the places we least expect.

We all get caught up in our work. In meetings. In our routines. But also in our own industries.

If we work in technology, we’re all looking at the same stuff.

Google and Facebook (and every other website) are catering what we see based on what we’ve seen before. What we consume is fitting in more and more with what we already like.

While this might be good for their business, it’s not great for your creativity.

You can’t rethink your industry if you’re only living in it. We’re not being introduced to new perspectives if all we see is what we know.

This is why today, we’re excited to announce a new interview series for makers and anyone who wants to make something for a living.

It’s (appropriately) called, Makers.

I know what you’re thinking. Great, another podcast interview series.

But I can assure you, Makers is different.

From book publishing to architecture to fashion, we’ve worked hard to find inspirational makers across disciplines, not just web, to give you an inside look at what fuels exceptional creators. No fluff. We’ve asked the juicy questions and gone after storylines you haven’t seen anywhere before to pull unique sources of inspiration for you.

Oh and one more thing. All the unique, hi-res photos from the interviews are available to download for free on Unsplash. You’ll see a link to download the photos at the end of each interview.

Each episode is 15–20 minutes long and you can check out the first 5 on iTunes and the Makers site today.

Here’s a peek at who you can expect to hear from:

Chris Messina

The creator of Twitter’s most ubiquitous feature — the hashtag # — opens up about his early days in San Francisco, working with the Mozilla foundation to support a free and open web, and how he managed to change the way we communicate forever (even though Twitter ‘just wasn’t that into it’ to start).

Mackey Saturday

In just a few short years, Instagram has gone from niche photo sharing app to more than 400 million users from around the globe. That’s almost half a billion people people who log in and see the app’s iconic logo at the top of their screen every single day, making it one of the most-viewed logos in the world. We talk to Mackey Saturday, the man responsible for the logo’s design, and find out how the project happened and how it’s changed his life.

Cat Noone & Ben Lehnert

As far as design power couples go, there are few that can compete with the incredible output, creativity, and talent of Berlin-based Cat Noone and Ben Lehnert. Not only are they incredibly prolific in their work, but the duo has also managed to find balance and create a life together — something that might seem impossible to those of us spending the majority of our waking hours staring at screens and building products.

We chat to the couple about living with another designer, side projects, how technology fits into their parenting philosophy, and what the Microsoft acquisition of Wunderlist (the company Ben co-founded) means for their lives.

Eliot Peper

With three books under his belt (all written and published in under two years), Eliot Peper successfully changed his life and fulfilled his dream of transitioning from entrepreneur to professional author.

Yet, like all dreams, they don’t always end how we’d imagined. In this episode, Eliot explains how he’s struggled with his own self-expectations and how once the initial high of releasing the books wore off, he faced the same issue that all creatives do: how do you measure success?

Frederic Mamarbachi

In an industry as cutthroat as fashion it’s all too easy to slip into the role of follower, chasing the tail of those calling out this year’s trends. Yet following means the best you can ever be is boring. We hear the story of m0851 founder Frederic Mamarbachi — a visionary designer who has built an empire on going his own way. He calls it, “selling your crooked nose”.